Graphic...

For painting class we had to do an interior, and it had to be in a graphic sort of style with no lineart. Which, in my opinion doesn't look as good and takes significantly longer than making it painterly and realistic, but hey, we live in a Flash world, and Flash doesn't like painterly and realistic. Whatever, c'est la vie. Who needs creative decisions when we can let technology tell us what to do instead.

The Pen Is Mightier

As legend has it, our storyboarding teacher John Williamson once animated a scene in "The Iron Giant" using a sharpie marker. I thought I'd try ball point first.

Nothing special, just an itch that needed scratching.

Quick Sketches

These are a couple characters from my storyboarding assignment (the Western thing I think I mentioned before).

So, the awesome Charlie Bonifacio did a guest lecture at school last week which was amazingly awesome and oh so inspiring. One of the points he discussed was to do warm up quick sketches. Basically just put a pencil to the paper and see what comes out. You'll often find that a character you're working on comes to life all on its own. I decided I like drawing in ballpoint pen, so I used that to do some quick sketches of one of the characters from my storyboarding assignment. It was a character that I wasn't really interested in, but drawing after drawing he became more real and alive to me (I guess that sounds kind of corny...). After this page was filled, I had a sudden urge to animate him. So I did.

Rough Muzzle Sync

This is the muzzle-sync assignment. Same as before, but with a character with a muzzle. I will be finishing the other character in a little while, until then it's just a held drawing. Also, the two are talking to a third character that is so lightly roughed in at the moment it is difficult to see. So there will probably be several versions of this popping up in the coming months. The audio is from "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Super...

So, this is my first lipsync assignment with a human character. We had to take an audio track with some sort of legible dialogue, and animate a full body character to it. Behold the aftermath. (the voice is Sarah Vowell of Incredibles fame, borrowed from one of the bonus features on The Incredibles DVD).

Super Sketches

For the next animation (which should be up in a few days) we had to take any audio track from anywhere and animate a character to it. Then the next two after that will be the beak and muzzle characters with the same criteria. For this human one I have a superhero that doesn't feel very super. I did a bunch of rough designs and fused them with the character from my walk/run animation, so it's not totally original, but I think it fits with the soundtrack I chose. Plus, some thumbnail drawings trying to figure out the animation. It's changed alot since these were done. The animation is due in two days.

Not So Goodfellas

For this character design assignment we had to make 2 animal characters, one with a beak and one with a muzzle to be used in our upcoming animation assignments. I wanted to do animals that aren't done very often, so I chose a walrus and a peacock. Walruses are weird. They have feet, but no legs, so making him stand up was a challenge. I still don't really know how he is going to walk. And peacocks are neat cause they have a cool design to their faces, and the tail will be fun to work with. The walrus is a crime lord and the peacock is sort of his second in command. I can't wait to animate these guys. As for what soundtrack I'm using, well, that's for me to know and you to find out. (hint: it's not from Goodfellas, despite the implication of the title of this post).

Maya in Review

I decided to not be lazy, and added the spokes.

Western Speed Painting

This is a digital "Speed Painting" of a street in a town, Old West style. It took about 1 hour. I plan to make several more and finish one into full colour in a week or so.
You may be seeing some more Western themed stuff over the next little while. A huge portion of second year is devoted to making a leica reel in one of three time periods: Medieval, Victorian, or Western. I chose the latter.

My Very Second Attempt at Maya Ever

For our first assignment in our 3D class we had to make a hard-surfaced object. I made a pennyfarthing. With magical invisible spokes. Yup.

My Very First Attempt at Maya Ever

So, we started 3D modeling in January. This was my very first attempt at something. It's kinda, sorta, not really a TIE Inteceptor from Star Wars (from memory). For the non-animationers seeing this, 3D modeling is basically sculpting using a computer program (Autodesk Maya 2008, in this case)

Life

Several life drawings of varying length.

Mondays...

My first shot at lip sync (besides last year's "meow"). I think the sound clip is from Office Space.

Lots of Life

A whole bunch of life drawings of varying times, some muscletacular studies and some old animal drawings from last semester (including a pony as per request by a certain friend of a certain brother of mine).

Holiday Fun with Via Rail

Well, last weekend was full of excitement and adventure. An enormous blizzard makes commuting 250 kilometers much more interesting. Apparently cold makes trains stop working. With a 5 hour delay at Union Station I figured I might as well make the most out of my time and draw all the happy, joyous people that were so enthused with Via Rail's preparedness for December snow. Maybe I'll colour it someday.

Also, to celebrate the holidays (and 1000 hits on my blog [I guess that means I'm not the only one who's looked at it]) here is my final project for our 'beloved' art history class. My buddy Nathan (link at the right) and I made a leica reel movie trailer for a film about Michelangelo and the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It's very rough around the edges and the voices are far from perfect, but considering short film leica reels normally take 4 months to complete, and this was done from scratch in 4 days, it'll have to suffice. Merry Christmas!

Expression Change Animation

This was the final assignment of the semester: the Expression Change. Basically we had to show thought by depicting a series of at least three expressions. I learned something from this. From now on, I'm going to make my animations shorter. I always make them too long and as a result they end up with rushed inbetweens, unfinished drawings, and I think it would be better if they were shorter and a lot more refined. So that's what I'm going to do from now on. Of course, I said that last time too....

Walk and Run Animation

Probably my biggest animation assignment ever. It's the first time I used multiple shots (8 to be exact). It was fun to do, but I'm relieved it's over. I just wish I could have finished inbetweening it and adding details. Maybe next time.

Anyway, this is my Walk and Run animation. 3 and a half weeks of my life put into 42 seconds of film. It's a crazy, bizzare, stupid thing to do, but that's what makes it so beautiful to me. I really couldn't see myself doing anything else for a living.

What Makes it Royal again?

It's that Royal Winter Fair time of year again. Here are some drawings of some animals. And people. The funniest looking animals of them all.